The WORST Game Dev Advice On YouTube...

I've been watching a lot of gamedev YouTube I've been watching it for the last like 10 years and uh there's some YouTubers who've said some really stupid things uh and and what's so funny is we're going to talk about these these pieces of advice I'm going to call them the sneaky 3 I'll tell you why they're called the sneaky 3 hang on but these three pieces of advice have been rolling rumbling around on YouTube and on Reddit and on Twitter for like a decade and again I've said I've said these things too and after you know 10 years of experience I've been published three times I've I've released two games on every single platform on my third game it's a 3D game published by 3D Realms just giving you some credibility there after all of this experience I'm just like oh man the the advice that these three things that I keep hearing over and over and over again over and over and over again they're kind of bothering me they're bugging me um because I don't think they're true what's so funny is they sound like Proverbs and we'll get

into what they are but they sound like these wise Proverbs of gamedev when in reality they're what what they're sneaky they're sneaky they're they're not true um let let's get into them the first one is uh well the first one is a void feature creep this one it seems so wise of course you don't want to include too much in your game of of of course you don't want to let too much come into your game that is outside the scope of your game right and this is true on the surface but there's a huge problem which is how do you know it's feature creep well reference my gdd right or let's reference the hook of the game what's the hook of the game well let's reference what the uh log line of the game is what's the what's the what's the loop of the game so for example I've talked about this on live streams but Twisted Tower I'm working on a game called Twisted Tower

I released the demo and what was so funny is the things that seemed like feature creep are the things that people love the most so for example the the the confetti the when when when a balloon pops and confetti comes out of the balloon or just popping balloons in general or looting objects uh breaking crates just really simple stuff that honestly you think well okay that's that's sort of just a side tangent for the game let's not worry too much about that let's focus on the enemy behavior let's focus on the uh adding bosses you know the the things that are really integral to a first person a shooter when in reality people love the balloons so when I say you don't know what feature creep is what I mean is is some things are feature creep some things aren't it's up to your audience it's up to your players to determine

what the feature creep actually is so that's why it's super duper important to test it with an audience okay so it's not that feature creep in and of itself is a is bad advice to avoid it it's that it ass it has a bad um presumption which is it assumes you know what feature creep is for your game in reality you probably don't you might have a general idea of what your game's about but in reality you need to test with an audience and an audience is going to tell you what they love I was talking to Thomas Maller about this um he's the creator of ory in the blind Forest he told me about he was talking to me about the balloons he said if it's fun do more of it okay well it's really up to you and your audience to determine what's fun and that will help you determine excuse me what feature creep actually is for your game so yes obviously you want to avoid feature creepe but it's way more important a

better way of putting this is just to just to say find out what's fun for your game and do more of that the problem is is the only way to to find out what's fun is to cook okay that brings me to my next one which is the gdd okay and we'll talk all about what I mean by cooking all right I was listening to this podcast with Brandon Sanderson and he talked and Brandon Sanderson is an incredible writer he wrote a a a book that I'm reading right now called a way of Kings or the way of kings and it's in The Stormlight uh The Stormlight Archive archives anyway most of you know this but anyway he's a great writer he talks all about what cooking is when it comes to writing and we're going to talk all about that by the way this video is sponsored by full-time gamedev check it out below the link is in the description uh the spring sale last for just 10 more days and you're going to learn well how to make indie games from your bedroom and more importantly how to actually secure six figures with your demo or how to get publisher or how to get funded on

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comes to baking who can follow a recipe and if I follow the wet recipe usually I'll get what I'm trying to make and it usually tastes something like what I'm trying to make the problem is if something goes wrong I have no idea why it went wrong and what I could have done to change it a chef is someone who can take the various styles of baking that different people use and apply them to their own process and create new things not from a recipe but that use the knowledge of previous recipes to create masterful new works I want you to be a chef when it comes to writing the problem with the gdd is that it assumes you know the ingredients of your game it assumes that you know exactly how to create your game as if it was like a prefab house that you're you're building right just follow the instructions and build the house right a gdd becomes more and more and more valuable I would say

the bigger your team gets and the more experience you have as a Game Dev like if you're a veteran with a big team using a gdd makes sense why because well a gdd is really good to reference right and it's also for your whole team and a game design document is something that you actually know how to craft as a veteran because you've done it a million times you've made a certain kind of game a million times so you know exactly what that game needs and so you just put it out and you lay out the ingredients well as an indie Game Dev with a small team I would much rather you cook and experiment with the ingredients and throw some salt here and throw in some jalapenos there and try it out say oh that doesn't taste good then throw in some chili right throw in some mustard I don't know throw in all these different ingredients test it out and try it out and you'll find out that what you planned in your GD the ingredients you put in your gdd

we're completely off right and so it's kind of similar to feature creepe right you don't really know what's fun or good with your game until you actually start cooking start playing with the ingredients and seeing what was valid in your gdd and what wasn't valid so do you throw away a gdd entirely No in fact I in my courses I teach fill out your gdd but the gdd is by by no means your Constitution it's by no means scriptural right or infallible it's just sort of a starting point it's it's like an outline and you need to be okay with completely wrecking your gdd G that's hard to say gdd or completely overhauling your gdd right so do a gdd but just be okay with completely redoing it over and over again until you just don't use it anymore right because at the end of the day especially as a new

Indie uh with a small team it's really about experimentation right now does this mean that I I think that you shouldn't have a hook and that you shouldn't have a tag a log line and that you shouldn't have um a a game Loop that's clearly defined and that you shouldn't have a focal point for your G for your project no of course you need to do your very very best to have that but the problem is is that unless you've made like four or five games you really don't know you really don't know if any of that stuff is any good so why would I want you to lock yourself into something that's not good instead cook experiment play have fun learn what's fun play testing is by the way the answer to one and two we'll get to number three in a sec but one and two the the real solution is not to just completely throw out a gdd or completely ignore the idea of feature creep the answer is

test not you your friends family by the way only test with friends and family who are number one honest and number two they actually want you to succeed if they're not honest or they want you to fail and by the way there's plenty of family members and friends who want you to fail you probably know who they are they probably popped in your mind they probably live rentree in your head too ignore those people but if they love you they want want you to succeed and they're honest get them to play test but more more importantly find actual people that you don't know online who like your genre of game and test it with them I swear to you it sounds scary and it sounds like I'll do that later you always sort of kick that can down the road that is detrimental to your project you need to find those people ASAP and start testing with them frequently because they will tell you the definition of feature creep for your game and they will tell you what in your

gdd is working okay the last one this is very similar to one and two the last one is you need to avoid the sunk cost fallacy I've heard game devs talk about this um I've heard them use the phrase sunk cost fallacy a lot I've done it I've said it too in a different way I've said you can't put lipstick on a pig right the sun cost fallacy is something like just because you've dug a really deep pit doesn't me doesn't mean you need to keep digging and finish the pit right just because you've put a ton of money and effort into this project doesn't mean that you should keep doing it and finish it if it sucks it sucks and you need to quit while you're ahead right quit while you're ahead that's another phrase this doesn't work for me I I just can't wrap my head around this

because okay I I I said this during a live stream the other day uh it was I think it was two days ago no it was yesterday I said the difference between an amazing game and a really bad game could be two months of work and look I get it it sucks because some of you might have a really bad game on your hands and it will never be better no matter how hard you try and how many hours you put into that project how many days and years it's always going to suck the problem is you don't know you don't know it's kind of like getting lost in the woods and hoping that around the corner is the road for example I'll come back to my game Twisted Tower the Twisted Tower demo was trash okay the first chapter of that game was trash in May of

2024 and I had it play tested at 3D Realms with the QA team I had higher ups at 3D reals play it I had my some of my Twitter followers play it and N people didn't get it they didn't know what it meant what the story was what's the theme with immersive Sims you want it to mean something right you want it to have some sort of poetic meaning nah they didn't get it the combat was me Graphics me they didn't understand the setting they just didn't get it so in my head I was like oh my goodness sunk cost fallacy why would I finish this game why keep moving forward with this game let's quit while we're ahead or again why put lipstick on a pig however out of sort of financial necessity and contracted or or like legal necessity I kept moving forward and kept finishing the game

and lo and behold all it took was two months of work to make to to make it to go from horrible to really awesome like I think it has a thousand reviews right now on Steam the demo at very positive and Truth is is that a ton of those negative reviews are actually just because of the optimization of the game the frame rate my tummy's rumbling uh so look it was two months of just polish and all of a sudden it went it became amazing the same happened with Ken LaVine I was talking to Ken LaVine about this with Bioshock he said two months prior to launch nobody understood the game nobody got it they didn't like it don't put lipstick on a pig quit while you're ahead no what the team did is they just addressed those issues and bang you have one of the best games ever made the sunk cost fallacy it can it can be used this sort of way of thinking can be used for something that has a a bit

more of a predictable business model you know like selling I don't know kitchen equipment for restaurants or selling cars or uh building houses you know these are things that you can actually uh quantify and understand hey this we are actually putting money into something that will not be profitable with an art form like a game it's so much harder to just determine hey sunk cost fallacy it's not that easy it's not that easy so what's the end solution here the solution to all three of these pieces of bad Game Dev advice it's not that you just completely ignore them it's that we need to at the very beginning before we even hear this advice we need to understand two things number one this is an art form art forms are not easil easil

easil easily measured they're not art art forms cannot be easily measured the metrics are difficult it's very very very subjective number two you don't know what you have until you test it understanding what the your game is what makes it fun what makes it valuable that's that's just not something that you as the developer can fully grb asasp your audience actually knows it better than you to some degree again another Catch 22 or I guess it would be a uh what do you call it two opposing ideas a paradox it's a paradox it's like you know your game better than your audience but your audience also knows your game better than you do you need to work together you got to work together to figure out what makes it actually fun to determine what is actually feature creep for your game and what is actually

well no I do need to put more balloons in this game I need I need to put more confetti in this game and more silly stuff because apparently people like it and I didn't know that number two when you know your audience you can better determine what's actually working in your gdd and sort of lock it in when you know your audience and what they think about your game you can determine whether you're actually putting lipstick on a pig or you're putting lipstick on on a beautiful hot model and you didn't know it right your audience is going to tell you that so there you go those are my three things three pieces of advice that I call the sneaky three hope that helps hey remember check out fulltime Game Dev today's sponsor of our video 40% off you're going to get 2D and 3D art Pro completely free and then you're also going to learn gdau unity and unreal take your pick whichever engine you want to learn you'll learn in this course 40%

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